On Faith
by Auua Ytjoml
Summary: After the questions, enters the grief, denial, fear... love. But then comes the truth, a trigger is pulled, and after the questions. . . death remains. (Dark AU)
1. After the Questions

**After the questions-  
****Enters the Grief-  
Denial-  
Fear-  
Love-  
A trigger is pulled-  
And after the questions- Death remains- **

It's been two years. Two years of fights and fear and so much blame that it feels like they're drowning.

First the questions: What are you doing? Is it drugs? A girl? You can talk to us. You can trust us. We want to trust you. – and never any answers.

_Jack is already in bed but she can't make herself join him. Danny's out again. He'll probably be back before dawn, unless he next reappears as a gang-violence victim on the front page. She listlessly turns the page of the Fentonpeeler manual and re-edits the design to match the one currently laid out across the kitchen table. _

_A thud from the upstairs catches her attention. Grabbing the improved weapon she pads silently up the stairs and cocks an ear for further sign of the disturbance. _

_Whatever it is it's in Danny's room. _

_Peeking through the cracked door her eyes widen. Phantom! In _her_ house. Her _son's_ bedroom. Fear grips her heart as she makes the decision to protect her family once and for all. She eases the muzzle through the cracked door, takes aim and fires. As if in slow motion something like a pale shadow peels away from the ghost. Its natural glow gutters like a candle. A moment latter it is completely extinguished._

_It turns, sees her where she stands in the now open doorway and seems to deflate before her eyes. They say nothing. She doesn't even know why she's still standing here as if trying to say goodbye. It's just a ghost. It's not like it's a real person. Just a malignant memory. _

_The ghost fades slowly as if his very makeup is fighting the decomposition. In the moments before the end he never looks away. Somehow she doesn't either._

The grief: Contrary to her nightmares there's no front page obituary, but he never comes home. At first they're sure he'll return. Then they fixate on finding him. By the time they realize they've lost their other child as well, it's too late.

_After another full night of searching the ghost zone for signs of a kidnapper, or, though they dread the possibility- a ghostly remnant – of their son, he returns to the house for some breakfast and a brief meeting with Maddie. She'd driven out to another homeless shelter in Chicago the day before and is planning on picking Jazz up from College on the way home. _

_The house is empty. He makes up something for the girls and sits down to wait._

_ An hour later he's readying to announce their disappearance to the entire town when Maddie walks through the front door and collapses into his arms._

_At first he can't get anything out of her and he's sure that something awful has happened to his Jazzy-pants. Then Maddie remembers the letter. He reads it in silence, fragments catching his eye and reverberating deep within him, imprinting themselves on his mind._

_Mr. and Mrs. Fenton - unscientific hatred of ectoplasmic entities - renounce you - don't expect to find me - If you ever realize just what you've done – turn yourselves in - Jasmine __**Apero**_

_The silence lasts far longer than his tears. _

Denial: Despite her warnings they try to find their daughter. When the government, under the guise of it being a public safety hazard, repossesses their house they finally give up. Not because they want to. They just don't have the resources. Leaving Amity is the hardest thing they've ever done. A month later they're back.

_Of the many ghosts in her hometown the creepiest are the ones that are still alive. She stares surreptitiously at two of them now as she passes their haunt on her daily jog. She vaguely recognizes them from somewhere else- somewhere brighter- oh right. Their daughter had been one of her yearmates. She wonders what happened. Was it a tragedy? A ghost? _

_The mom looks up and catches her gaze. She slows to a stop. The woman approaches. There's a light of recognition in her eyes and the ragged ghosthunter asks her if she knew Danny. Who? Shaking her head she disentangles herself from the woman's grasp. _

_The next day the empty lot is truly empty and she can't decide whether to sign in relief or send the couple a prayer. _

Fear: And after all, in the end everyone was right.

_She's holding Jazz's scrapbook – the incomplete first version that had been left behind and then forgotten. It's one of the few things they brought with them when the house was condemned. _

_The pages almost seem to flip themselves so absorbed is she in the magical images of her son – whole and safe – and her daughter – laughing and home. Of course there's many pictures of Phantom in there to but she can't convince herself to change a single letter of the last thing she has of her children. _

_The last page holds only one picture. In it a grimacing Phantom holds up a smirking Danny. The image seems wrong to her, as if their reactions are the opposite of what they should be. Leaning closer she insects the minutia of their faces: looking for an answer. _

_That night a fading Phantom invades her dreams and in the memory of her home she watches silently as he turns into her son who utters one word – Mom – before collapsing bonelessly to the floor which turns into a swirling void leaving her stranded in a maelstrom of hostile emotions. A whispers all around her _"you're fault. You're fault. You're fault."

_The next morning she knows that Jazz was right. She waits until Jack leaves for more fast food sustenance and then she pens a single brief note. She tells him everything_. We we're wrong_. She tells him she's a monster. _I pulled the trigger_. She tells him she loves him. _I know where Danny is_. She tells him not to follow her. _

_She pulls the trigger._

**A/N: So what did you think? Were you able to follow who was narrating ****what? I've not tried doing 3rd person singular (rather than more or less omniscient) before... **

**There will be a follow up I'm just not quite sure which direction I want to take it in. **

**Read and Review! Comments, complements and critiques all are welcome. **


	2. Death Hovers

**A/N: So I decided to write two endings, each taking a slightly different slant. I'm sorry to say that neither of them can really be called happy but hey, I needed some angst to balance the happily ever after I'm writing in another fic :). **

**Comments, Critiques and complements always welcome!**

_She pulls the trigger. There's no pain and it's only when she opens her eyes that she realizes that the wind in her ears had been the bullet passing through her. _

_Tangibility resettles on her like a heavy blanket. She turns. _

_'Hi' he says. One word and she's on her knees, unable to see through her tears, unable to think through her guilt, unable to love through her pain. Something in his face tells her he feels the same and she doesn't understand and then she's clinging to him and she thinks he's clinging back and she wonders if maybe the bullet really did work because there's no way her son is really alive. _

_Mad- Mom?_

Forgiveness comes slowly.

_From That Day on Maddie is mute. For a while Jack joins her and it's only with much effort on his part that his sister finally relents and tries to talk to the man who was once their father. She's surprised to find that she's happy when he talks back._

_It's hard for him. Every day is a struggle to keep himself together – literally – and some days he can't leave the ecto-infuser at all. When Jazz had found out that he'd skipped town to find their parents with only a bag of ecto-pens to sustain his ghost half she'd flipped. When he brought them home she simply shut him out. _

_She's talking to him again by the next morning but the tension still remains. _

_They tried to kill you!_

_They're not trying anymore._

_Maddie almost did kill you!_

_She's still Mom. _

And the threat of death is always there.

_They do agree on keeping the Fentons out of their business. In order to care for her brother Jazz had set herself up to get a biological degree online and works full time with Sam and Tucker to set up a viable ecto-technology business. Several bribes and some carefully applied pressure had gotten them one of Vlad's defunct cloning units – they never stabalized permanently anyways, he'd told them - which they'd reoutfitted to contain the faint ecto-electral signature that was all that had remained of Danny. _

_Healing was a long process. He actually remembers the process of regaining awareness. It hurt like pins and needles and later like a warm bath that almost never fails to send him drifting in and out of reality as electrical signals carried by stray ectoplasm jump neurons. Other side affects occasionally have him to jerking his arm when he means to move a leg and seeing double no matter how much he tries to focus. _

_The ecto-infuser isn't a permanent solution. They all know it. Another cloning unit from Vlad never leaves Maddie's room. Jack immerses himself in his 9-5 job. His income is a grudgingly welcome _stable_ addition to the group's income. Sales from the business tend to be big but far between. _

_Above all, the tensions, the unstated hatreds and fights that simmer below the surface and only break out when Danny's not there, there is an unspoken promise. _

_Son. Brother. Friend. Something more. _

_They will save him. _


	3. Death Haunts

**A/N: This is the ALTERNATIVE ending; a 'what if', if you will. Enjoy!**

_She pulls the trigger. There's no pain. This surprise her briefly but the feeling of becoming unbound from herself is an unsettling one and soon all she can do is hold on to one thought above all else as her vision goes black. Danny. Danny. Danny. Danny._

Something moves in the darkness and she finds her self on her hands and knees. She tries to gasp and then she's hacking and choking because she doesn't think she has lungs anymore and how does that even work-?

A hand lifts her to her feet. A voice- simultaneously old and young- whispers in her ear. -guilt. -obsession. -good luck.

She doesn't hear half of what he says and then he's gone and she's drifting alone in a vast expanse of something. She can't tell what. Everything is dark.

Eventually something pushes past her inhibitions and she stumbles forward despite the darkness. Sometimes voices join her in her private world and she welcomes the guidance even if she can tell that all some want to do is throw her off course. She takes their advice anyways. After all she doesn't know where she's going.

But she knows what she'll find when she gets there and one day she finally hears _his_ voice.

"Go away Writer. I know. I don't want to see her. I don't want to talk to her. I don't want to know why she's here. And if you-"

She doesn't hear the rest of what he says. Instead she quickly turns around and flies as straight as possible until she bumps into one of the floating islands. She settles among its trees and looks out into the blankness. She will wait until he's ready to face her. And even if she knows she doesn't deserve his forgiveness just maybe she'll ask for his love.

Just maybe, she thinks, that this time she doesn't need answers and with that thought she sees, for the first time since it happened, just a hint of green.

**Complements, comments, critiques always welcome!**


End file.
